But like a snag in one of Aasta’s intricate snowflake sweaters, a yarn had come loose. Tug at a loose yarn and the whole might unravel, Aasta said.
First the photographs.
Part of me wanted to put them back in the shed, hide them under the paint can, and forget I’d ever found them.
But there was a second snag.
Victor’s asking, wanting to know . . .
Everyone has a last name.
His words chimed in my head . . . name . . . name . . . name . . . until I could scarcely breathe.
Turning back to the cottage, I paused on the top step. A fresh hatch of fish flies clung to the cedar shakes, as if defying the Worthingtons’ love of order. Unlike mosquitoes, deer flies, and horse flies, fish flies, at least, with their delicate oversized wings and filament tails, were harmless. I reached for one, its wings like pieces of etched glass. In protest, the fish fly wiggled its greenish elongated body, but I tossed it into the air, and it flew off.
I wasn’t a Worthington. I couldn’t pretend any longer. I had to find out who my mother was.
Who I was.
Chapter 3
With the Worthingtons gone, I didn’t bother to get out of bed the next morning. I drifted in and out of a dark sleep, without a reason to get up, with the photographs strewn across my quilt. If I was neither their servant nor their daughter, then what did that make me? A pet? I’d been forbidden to leave the house. What did they think would happen if they granted me a little freedom—that I’d go wild and wayward like my mother?
Yet I remembered now the softness of Mama’s hands, the way she brushed back my hair. Mama’s voice was gentle and steady. “My sweet Sadie Rose,” she used to say to me. I could almost hear the pitch, like reverberations that follow long after a piano chord is struck.
I remembered then . . . when the man left the boardinghouse, I’d sprung to my feet like a broom-swept mouse . . .
Beyond the parlor, the door to Darla’s room was closed. When she locked her rolltop desk and went to bed, visiting hours were finally over.
Desperate to see Mama, I darted upstairs, down the hallway, and turned the glass knob to our bedroom. Through the lace curtains, the street lamp cast a gray light. Everything appeared the same.
The ceramic washbasin and pitcher rested on the washstand.
Bedsheets gathered in rumpled waves.
But the quilt rack stood bare.
And Mama was gone.
Like flames, panic burst in me and I flew down the staircase, nearly falling headfirst on the last step. Then I raced into the kitchen, pushed back the curtain, and scraped a hole with my fingernails in the frost-laced window.
I peered out.
The man trudged across the railroad tracks and into the blowing snow, shouldering the quilt, bulky as a sack of potatoes.
Pushing my fist to my lips, I cried into my flesh. “Mama!”
From a peg by the kitchen door, I yanked my hooded coat and pulled it over my nightdress. I searched for my boots but couldn’t find them. Instead, I stepped into Mama’s leather lace-ups and stumbled out the back door and down the steps. With my feet pushed forward into the toe of each boot, I picked up speed, following footprints that the wind was quickly erasing.
A knock on my bedroom door sent the photos flying from my hands and across the rug. Flustered, I scrambled out of bed, gathered the photos, hid them under my pillow, and opened the door.
“Sadie?” Aasta asked. Though white haired and in her midfifties, she carried herself straight and tall. “I worry you sick? Staying in your room long time?” With the boldness more of a parent than domestic help, she peered into my room. “Maybe, I think, you’re hiding young man?” She winked at me. “Ya?”
I shook my head in protest, but, unwilled, a smile climbed to my lips. She had a gift for that. Over the years, she’d left unexpected notes. Once, when I’d overslept—and Mrs. Worthington scorned anyone who slept past seven—I heard the rustle of a note under my bedroom door. It read, “Greet the day! No moments get away!” or the time when I’d failed my mathematics exam given by that terrible tutor and Aasta had handed me a card: “Life rewards cat who catches mice, not those that count them.” In my earlier years, when Mrs. Worthington turned the task of disciplining over to Aasta, I would follow Aasta into the kitchen with my head down, as if in dread. Then Aasta would take out the wooden spoon and smack it across the potholders on the countertop.
“The Worthingtons asked me to stay here with you, but I must go early in the morning. I am asked to help on Red Stone Island. Thelma, the cook, she’s worried. Ennis has big banquet.” Aasta ironed her skirts with her palms, as if to ready herself for the upcoming event. “Hans will walk me to landing early and bright in the morning. Now, I’m going home for a bit, but you don’t worry. I’ll be back to make dinner.”
I grabbed my slate board with trembling hands, spotting an opportunity, and quickly wrote: “Red Stone? Is that near Falcon Island?”
Aasta shrugged. “I just go where boat takes me. But ya, Falcon is near Red Stone, I think.”
Again, I scribbled quickly. “Tomorrow—may I go with you and help?”
Aasta laughed. “Silly girl,” she said, in her singsong accent, her hands on her hips. “You may be orphan, but the Worthingtons—they would not be for you working there.”
I realized I was tapping my bare foot on the floor and clenching my fists at my sides, the way I used to as a child when I wanted to speak out and the words wouldn’t come. I stopped myself and wrote firmly on my slate: “I can’t be stuck inside here all day or I’ll go crazy!”
Aasta studied me, as if by doing so she would uncover the real reasons. I held my breath, afraid the answer would be a resounding “No.” What I couldn’t tell her was that I wanted to know more about my mother and that I couldn’t do that staying holed up like a mole.
Then Aasta tilted her head.
“Sadie, Sadie. You know I love you like you are my own. But if I say ya, you promise it is secret?”
I sniffed so loudly, it came out as a snort, and I almost laughed out loud.
“Okay, then. We’ll take the six o’clock boat. I’ll wake you at five, and you must wear the sensible shoes and work clothes and kerchief. I’ll bring extra apron. Thelma will like more helping hands. But if Mr. Ennis finds out, he will tell Worthingtons. They would not be happy.”
I nodded and smiled.
“Now I must go to Jensen’s Creamery. They need butter at Red Stone. How can they run short of butter! Imagine.”
I scribbled on my slate. “I’ll go to the creamery for you. May I?” I hoped Aasta would bend on this simple request and added, “Please?”
To my surprise, she replied, “Ya. Okay then.”
I jumped up and squeezed her hands in mine. Mrs. Worthington wouldn’t be pleased that Aasta had bent the rules, but I couldn’t have been happier.
The moment I stepped beyond the fenced yard, I began to breathe easier. It wasn’t as if I wore a corset like Mrs. Worthington—thank God—but my life had been constrained. Suddenly I longed for a shorter dress, or pants, and not the petticoat and skirt that reached to just above my ankles. The navy cotton was loose but hot, and my heeled boots much too warm for a summer day. But at least I was free to walk to the creamery!
I was ready to taste freedom. And why not? Things were changing for women. I’d read in the International Falls Press and in the St. Paul Pioneer Press that the Suffrage movement was getting closer to its goals. Just this month the Senate passed the Nineteenth Amendment. Now, if it gets ratified by the states, women could be voting as early as fall for the next president. Away with corsets! Time for changes! That women would be treated equally under the law was only right, but it was taking forever! I had been hearing names like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul for a long ti
me. And alongside them, thousands of ordinary women were taking part in demonstrations, picketing the White House, and going to jail. One woman even chained herself to a courthouse door in Minneapolis, just to make a point.
And me? I almost wanted to laugh. Women might soon have the right to vote, but here I was, stealing the right to walk alone.
I loved every step of the way. I turned left at the town hall, strode past the bank and its stained-glass half-moon windows. A man in a suit tipped his hat as I passed by. “Good morning, Miss,” he said.
I nodded slightly and smiled in return.
Seagulls sounded their melancholy cries, riding warm air currents as I continued down Main Street, past the general store, the White Turtle Club, and Ranier’s post office.
Several taverns lined the streets, but fewer than in the past. Mr. Worthington prided himself in cleaning up Ranier after taking me in. “There were more brothels than houses,” he’d say, “but during my time as mayor, we changed that.”
I’d learned many of his stump phrases by heart: “Good citizens must stand up or be trampled by the corrupt.” Or the shortened version: “Stand up or be trampled!”
As I crossed the railroad tracks, I pretended not to notice the boardinghouse on my left, now called Callahan’s Tavern. I glanced at the gray clapboard, streaked by rust-bleeding nails. And then I forced myself to look up—up to the corner window where I’d once gazed out, half expecting my mother to peer back at me, but the windows were boarded up. At Darla’s I’d heard the girls called all kinds of things: clipper, fancy lady, lady of the night, prostitute, and red skirt—since they wore red skirts around town. When I’d asked Mama once to sew me a red skirt, too, she shook me by my shoulders. “You will never wear a red skirt!” I’d run from her room, crying at her meanness.
“Outta the way!” someone shouted.
A horse-pulled wagon startled me, and I jumped back. I didn’t realize I’d stopped to stare. As the wagon drove on, I noticed the raven he’d tried to avoid. The black bird fluffed its feathers, wings extended as it returned to pecking at its small decaying treasure.
I rounded the corner by Lou’s Trading Post and Erickson’s Fine Grocery, where three dogs slept in the shade of the green awning, and then stepped into the squat brick building of Jensen’s Creamery. Empty milk crates were stacked to the ceiling. Behind a small counter, a chalkboard stated prices for cheese, cream, and milk (delivered and wholesale).
I rang the little brass bell and waited, studying the colorful flyer on the counter: The One, the Only, Robinson’s Touring Circus! Coming Soon! Before I could give it more thought, the swinging doors opened.
From the warehouse stepped Owen Jensen, no longer a pudgy boy, but more of a man, especially in the plaid-shirt attire of so many northern men.
“Hey, Sadie Rose!” His brown eyes brightened as if we knew each other well, which was hardly the case, and his lips widened into a smile that—to my surprise—warmed me to my toes. He’d become lanky and oddly good-looking. I’d seen him before on the city bus ride between Ranier and International Falls—I sat in front, he always rode toward the back—and at the public library I’d spotted him with his wavy reddish hair bent over out-of-town newspapers. Job-hunting, I’d decided.
He was a year or two older than I was. I stared at his Adam’s apple that jutted from his long, tan neck—then forced myself to look away.
“Can I help you?”
I nodded, and my face heated with embarrassment.
He thumped the circus flyer. “Hey, did you see this? Coming next week. You gonna go?”
I lifted my eyebrows and shrugged.
“You know, Sadie Rose, I’ve always wondered why you weren’t in school. I mean, I know you can’t talk, but—I guess it’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you . . .”
Heat rushed to my face again. I stood there, scolding myself for not tucking the slate board into my shoulder bag. I lifted a pencil from a holder and raised it. I’d felt so at ease with Victor, so why did being with Owen feel so different? It was as if bees had taken up lodging in my head, making it hard to think.
“Here,” he said, handing me a scrap of paper from a pile. “You can write on this.”
Owen Jensen was a local boy. I shouldn’t feel so nervous. I wrote, quite simply: “Twelve pounds of butter, please.”
“Yeah, got it. That’s a lotta butter. What are ya gonna do with all that? Bake ten wedding cakes?”
I scrunched up my nose.
“Oh, there’s a lady who bakes wedding cakes, and she’s always needing extra butter in the summer months.”
I scribbled quickly: “Aasta needs to take it to Red Stone tomorrow.”
“Tell ya what, I’ll do one better. I’ll make a note of it and run it out there tomorrow first thing. I’ve started doing extra deliveries with my boat. Some of those rich folks on the lake, people complain they don’t tip, but they seem to loosen up their wallets soon as I start talking about my college plans.”
College.
I liked the sound of that word.
“Besides, you don’t want all that butter to melt on your way home.” He turned to an ordering pad and scribbled something down. “Well, I have to clean out the milk coolers, so if you don’t mind. I’ll run your order out there tomorrow. Promise.”
I mouthed the words “Thank you, Owen.” And I half-wondered if he was just finding an excuse to possibly see me again.
He smiled, gave me a polite nod, then disappeared back into the creamery.
As I headed back, I almost wanted to skip. Owen Jensen. He’d stirred up some sweet warmth in me. And he’d treated me—not just as the Worthingtons’ responsibility—but as me. Asking Aasta to run her errand had been a fine, fine, fine idea.
I returned toward the railroad tracks, where a cluster of workers now gathered, wielding sledge hammers and spikes. Ear-ringing clangs of steel upon steel stopped as I neared. I felt eyes following me.
The sun beat down, and the pungent smell of creosote pitch wafted up. With each step, the acrid smell became stronger, burning my nostrils.
And then one of the men wolf-whistled.
I kept my focus on the road, on my footing. I didn’t want to get my heels caught in the crevices between the smooth steel. My instincts told me to keep moving.
Another crooned, “Oh, I’d love to jump that little caboose, eh?”
“She’s a little vixen, that’s what.”
“Sweetie, got time for a dime?”
Their chuckles followed me as I walked on. I wasn’t wearing anything provocative or inviting. I certainly wasn’t wearing a red skirt. And yet, how quickly they’d made me feel . . . dirty . . . vulnerable. I wanted to say something, to tell them to mind their own business. I wanted to run home, but instead I swallowed hard, my throat parched, and walked on, head high—like a proper young lady.
I would never want Mama’s life.
I wanted freedom, to keep learning, and to study music.
And to do that, I needed to go to college. And then . . . I could become independent and make my own choices. I wouldn’t have to wait on the whims of the Worthingtons. I could dream of performing someday as a classical pianist—or, at the very least, becoming a music teacher.
College.
It made perfect sense.
But the word floated by, out of grasp, with the dreamy improbability of a fairy tale. Owen Jensen, the son of a creamery operator, could dream of college, but what about the daughter of a red skirt?
Chapter 4
When I stepped inside, the walls pressed in around me like cage bars. I paced from the piano up to my bedroom to the screened-in porch and back again, my mind drifting. Memories or imaginings flooded in . . .
The man was somewhere ahead, hidden in the pale night of swirling flakes.
Th
e street was empty. Wind whipped through town and turned everything white: the boardwalk and taverns, the two-story boardinghouses that lined Ranier’s dirt road, the piles of horse dung, the simple houses of fishermen, the train idling beside the depot. I leaned into the barbed wind and hurried on to the end of the block. Briefly sheltered by the bank building, I glanced up at its new bricks and a half-moon window of stained glass.
Across the snowdrifts, snow snakes hurtled at me, whirling, white, and hissing. My toes and hands turned numb, and my teeth chattered without stop. I pulled up my hood, but the wind yanked it from my grip and shrieked in my ears, scolding me for being outside and alone on such a night.
“Mama!” I cried, lips nearly too stiff for speech.
But only the wind answered.
Ahead, the man appeared, a shadow of black and white, then melted again into the storm.
A trickle of sweat ran under my camisole and between my breasts, bringing me back to June. I was sixteen. Yet my heart raced with remembering.
I followed but tripped in deepening snow and fell. Snow filled my cuffs and iced my wrists. I glanced back toward the boardinghouse, but the bank building had already faded into the storm. On hands and knees I crawled, head down, to a hollow in a snowdrift, a welcoming cave of quiet. I hunched into a ball—a tiny, tiny ball—making myself smaller and smaller, curled into myself until tears iced against the rough wool of my coat, curled in the whiteness . . . and slept.
I floated high above myself, my woolen coat covered by snow. Above the drifts and outside the town hall building, I looked on as a man dropped his shovel and fell to his knees beside the white mound that was me—and not me.
Mama was calling my name, “Sadie Rose . . . ,” and I saw her in the whiteness of clouds above, but just as swiftly her image disappeared, while I was caught somewhere between the cottony sky and the snowbanks below.
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